I am sure this makes many of you happy but as a kid whose tickets were going to have excellent senior standing next year and who always makes it before kickoff, I am really angry.

GA is just chaos

(Edit: As a poster pointed out below, tickets are also way more expensive)

(Second Edit: To those thinking you will get good seats just for showing up before kick, you are wrong. Now that there is a reason to go early, we will have our own mini-Paternoville. For good games, you will have to be there 2 hours early. I love Michigan football, but as a grad student who also remembers pregames as the best part of being an undergrad, I really think this could kill some of the Saturday fun.)

I never was late for the band coming out. I studied my ass off. I worked jobs. I cannot go out and live outside for 12 hrs before a game because I have a life. PS- I went to every bowl game. I'm an awful fan. yeah right. I'm just studious, low on cash and time, and I love the team. I don't get rewarded buying tix for the past 4 years. You are short sighted and never thought about the situation. Get a life.

I love this game more than anything in my life. I spent every single one in my car except the last Sugar Bowl. Driving doesn't cost that much if you know how to budget your expenses. I can show you how to live on a budget if you'd like.

Use your superior budgeting skills to budget you time, so eight times a fall you can go to the stadium early and watch the team you love so much from the front 20 row seat you feel so strongly that you have earned. I believe in you.

It takes $500 to be on the waiting list for real season tickets BEFORE you have to pay for the normal tickets. Try budgeting for that, rent, cable, phone, insurance, student loan payments, etc on a $35k salary before taxes. My condolences that your parents have to pay $300 for student tickets for you...

You poor, privileged soul. Pretty silly to assume that everyone who went to UM had it paid for by their parents. This dude, in particular talked about working while in school and being low on cash - seriously like three posts above yours - which would seem to indicate that he may not have been quite as lucky as you in the financial birth lottery.

No worries. 6 am reading has never been one of my strong suits. I should have read more carefully and made sure I understood everything; however, I still maintain that a large majority of students will be impacted zero by the price increase.

No worries. 6 am reading has never been one of my strong suits. I should have read more carefully and made sure I understood everything; however, I still maintain that a large majority of students will be impacted zero by the price increase.

Unfortuantely, I think your situation is in the vast minority of students who can't show up early. Most just simply choose not. If every student was like you, then there wouldn't be a problem but that's not the case and now you're being inconvieninced because of the other population of students who hasn't been showing up regularly. The seniors this year are getting particularly screwed because, as you said, you've been waiting your turn to get into the best seats. Ultimately I think this is the best thing for the student section and has been a long time coming.

I agree with you. I think the best option would be to grandfather the new system. I'm in grad school now, had my turn up front, but it bothers me that the kids the next 2 yrs are getting "screwed."

I also nvr had a problem with someone kicking me out of the seat I came to at the start of the game. Then again, I was a good person and sat in the seat I was assigned. So ppl complaining about getting kicked out of seat by drunk kids still broke the rules by not using their assigned seat.

Finally, I just don't understand why we didn't have any input on the system. I would be all in favor to change the current (now previous system). It was flawed, but the new one is also. They should have formed a committie with students and made a change that could be digested. Not one stuffed down throats over night by the man.

Yes, I agree that a couple classes of students will get screwed. Too bad, that's life. Take it as a lesson for when you're out in the "real world" with a job. People in charge of companies, athletic departments, and other organizations make major changes all the time. Some often reap a benefit while others get screwed.

3 years ago, I got a letter from the AD telling me that I was being kicked out of my longtime seats in section 34 because they were expanding the student section. Seats I'd had since the late 1990s. Gameday friendships formed with the people who sat around me. All gone. And now I sit at the opposite end of the stadium, staring at my EMPTY old seats because the dumbasses I got kicked out for can't be bothered to show up. With the new GA system, you may not get to sit in the front row anymore, but at least you can still sit with your friends, and even sit with some that maybe you weren't able to before. You don't know what screwed is until you've paid thousands year after year for seats you've had for most of your adult life, and then just have 'em ripped away from you.

And you wanted input? Really?? With David Brandon? Please. I don't always agree with what he does, but I do in this case. You (collectively as a student body) already gave your input by not showing up for games.

Twitter is the devil.

Much easier than the roundabout "solution" to attempt to get students into their seats by game time. (Does anybody here really think that will work, for latest 1/3 of student-attendees? I don't.)

No; the much easier solution is to make student tickets DEAR to those lucky enough to have them. Cut down on the number of student tickets.

If I were Dave Brandon, I'd give you back your old seats. Because you're the kind of guy you are, and because I am the kind of guy I wish Dave Brandon were, I might give you a one-year break on your PSD.

There. Feel better now? Isn't that a better deal for you?

As this thread kicks around past 300, 400 posts, it is time for PREDICTIONS. And my prediction is that General Admission seating for students by itself will do little if anything to solve the problem of 1/2 to 1/3 of the student section being empty at kickoff.

Think about it: without assigned seats, the number of students that attend every game will be measured and it will be easier to reduce the number of seats based on the "loyal" attendees. That's maximizing revenue and holding students accountable (you show up, you get tickets next year)

While I agree with your conclusion, how would this system allow you to measure the number of students that attend every game as opposed to the old system? Tickets are scanned either way and I'm sure that is how the come up with the numbers.

If you make it before kickoff, you'll still get great seats. This won't change anything since almost no one sits in their exact assigned seats. I and my group always arrived way early and never missed a game but my senior assigned sets were like row 20. So you never are promised front row...

I am not at all claiming that. But from my own basketball experience and talking about it with friends from State, it's not a good system. It's a shitty experience waiting in line, getting cut by drunk kids who show up after you, and having everyone try to squeeze their friends in. Having a few empty rows up top may not be pretty to look at but the current system is what's best for my viewing experience. Which is what actually matters to me.

Sorry but if we're going to talk about "shitty experiences," let's talk about how INVARIABLY a gaggle of drunk, obnoxious sorority girls would show up halfway through the second quarter (or later) of every game demanding that security remove whoever was standing in "their seats."

I've arrived shortly after kickoff and had to forcefully demand that someone leave my seat. Had no choice.. when you dj pregames you're going to be late sometimes. Packing away equipment is essential and time-consuming. Never had to get security tho.

the drunk sorority girls didn't show up for games all year long until the last game of the season aka Michigan/O$U game. They pushed us away from our seats and we yelled at them for taking our seats. They went to the ushers and demanded to stay at their seats in which they had tix for it.

But MSU fans, by and large, don't care that much as we do about about football. They've become a basketball school. Some old-time alumni might disagree but younger generations of MSU fans definitely seem to take basketball more seriously and look at football as more a diversion.

GA is done to an extent at Alabama (102,000). Although there are no assigned seats, they also do Block Seating (based on membership in fraternities, different graduate programs, etc.). Obviously, Block Seating will never happen at Michigan, but even with the Block Seating, the student section is full by an hour before kickoff, especially the upper deck, which is fully GA. It seems to work well at Alabama, but they also have a point system where you get 1 point if you are late and 2 if you miss a game (if you get more than 3 you can only get a partial season package the next season). They also take pictures of the Blocks at kickoff, and that goes into determining what organizations get the best seats.

You'll need to get there crazy early to get a seat in the first few rows, and the TV attention that comes with it. Beyond that I feel like almost every seat is a good seat. You'll want to be lower, sure, but there won't be an all-out riot to acquire Row 35 vs. Row 50.

Just my opinion. Meeting friends and things like that get a little more complicated. Pre-gaming becomes more of a chess match.

I think the senior, and even the Junior, classes are the calateral dammage in all of this. But I think this system is better overall and unfortunately it had to be 1 senior class who got hosed in this deal no matter when they made the switch. I have always liked general seating for students and it works out really well in places like PSU. Somehow it just makes the most sense in a non-uniform seating section like the student section. To some extent, the student section always ends up GA durring the games anyway.

I think the best part abotu GA is that you can get a group of 10 friends together and all sit together in the stadium if you want to. And if you meet someone during the semester that you want to sit with, say even a girlfriend, you can.

I think football is a little different than basketball given how many seats are open for football vs. basketball to students. Heck, most of the games last year you could have walked in after the 1st quarter and gotten a seat midway up the stadium in the student section. Of course bigger games will mean more competition for the best seats, but those occurances are rare and it's likely that if you show up before kickoff you'll be at least halfway up the bleachers or less.

Long time coming. It keeps the greek kids and Super Drunks who show up at the end of the 1st quarter near the top of the stadium. Nothing was more annoying than an overpacked section of students sneaking down and taking the seats of students who show up very late. If you show up late, then you deserve to sit up high.

You do realize way way WAY more than just greeks party before the game and/or decide to skip. Greeks are visable and most to near all of them do drink and hence make an easy target, but I know a ton of Greeks like myself who never had an issue making it on time.

Good fans make it by game time, fair weather fans don't. Both of these types of fans are in all parts of college life.

but if I could stereotype, I'd guess they were. But they showed up to a game with 3 minutes left in the 2nd quarter and tried to cram like 8 drunk girls into the tiny bit of room still remaining (my section refused to budge so they had to stand front to back) they then left before halftime ended.

Making them go in row 98 when they stumble in hammered with 3 minutes left in the 2nd quarter is a victory for America